


Risen from Ash

by bushierbrows (wingbones)



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Fix-It of Sorts, Gratuitous Use Of Fire Metaphors, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Justice Is Served, M/M, Slow Burn, Trauma, War, What is it good for? Absolutely nothing, criticism of the military machine
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-25
Updated: 2019-09-16
Packaged: 2020-09-26 02:40:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 19,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20382322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wingbones/pseuds/bushierbrows
Summary: All his life, Lee has only known the bitter taste of loss. His memories are singed by flame; he does not look back, only forward, shielding himself from the reminders of all that the war has taken from him.He spares a life and it comes back to save him. Between them, they can end the years of bloody battle they have lived through.





	1. Fate, A Circular Thing

**Author's Note:**

> you ever just hate how war and the trauma characters receive as a result are handled by canon, and decide to be the change you want to see in the world? 
> 
> this is an amalgamation of Many Thoughts about the naruto universe. same setting, completely different timeline, kind of a fix-it AU? it started as a writing exercise and quickly snowballed into an entire story - i have the plot outlined, but i'm not sure of the chapter count yet. overall warnings for canon-typical violence, depictions of abuse, loss and trauma, and the sweet deliciousness of karma. 
> 
> i hope y'all enjoy!

The Valley of Fire was, in opposition to its name, a verdurous realm. When winter made its plodding journey through the lands its feet only just skimmed the Valley, bringing frost on the breeze but not much more; in all times of year it was the emerald jewel of the heartland, fair-weathered and unmoving. From the Valley came the abundance of the region’s agriculture, and walking down its well-worn dirt roads one could see nothing for miles but the sprawling sheets of farmland cordoned off at the edges by trees like earthly barriers, tracing netted green webbing over the rolling hills. The villages were far-flung from each other, surrounded on all sides by these fields as far as one could feasibly tread in an afternoon before the spread of the next village began. And all everywhere was the song of the birds, the insects, the wind in the grasses and leaves. 

Its moniker was befitting not the appearance of the country but its people. They’d sprung from the earth from the heat-tipped claw of a lightning strike, it was said, and they came forth as warriors whose hearts burned like the flames that bore them; under their hands they wrested this land of gemmed greenery from the warring jaws of the surrounding nations, and it was also said that it was only after the fiery purge of their brushfires had the Valley truly come to bloom. 

Whatever the truth, as it was always more fantastical than the reality, the Valley was the pride of the people of the Fire and they defended it from the greedy clasps of their neighbors, generation upon generation, since the dawn of their time there. For this reason they were known as soldiers as much as they were farmers; in every village a living was made in the field, be it battle or harvest. Indeed if not one then the other, or for some families, both. 

Lee’s family was one such: his father and his father’s father were esteemed guardians of the Hokage, and his uncles and aunts and cousins lovingly tended the shallow wetfields in which they grew the lotus flower. Even his mother, whose face he could only recall from the faded portraits in the halls of the house, knew her sword as well as she knew the composition of the soil beds of the ponds. The family name was a noble one, its reputation as immovable as the earth it was named after, and speaking it could bring safe passage anywhere in the Valley. He was expected to wear it like a badge of honor, like a shield, like a heavy weight on his back. 

Every morning before dawn cracked and spilled the yolk of the sun on the horizon, during the time of harvest season, he went to the ponds with his younger cousins and cut the thick yellowed stems; by noon he walked to the town square with baskets of dried leaves over each shoulder; by dusk he headed home with his earnings and if he did well, his aunt would walk outside with him and show him the ways of battle. His fondest memories were made in the grass behind the family home, learning taijutsu, beaten utterly each time but only growing fonder. 

He always thought his familiar fields would be those of war. His father assumed the same, and when he came of age to learn Lee was sent alongside his older cousins to train in Konohagakure, but he did not make it a month before the head of the academy sent him back with a letter defining Lee as ‘exceedingly unremarkable.’ His father burned it after reading the words and as the flame leapt up to devour it the light danced across the hard, drawn lines of his face. His disappointment soured the air and curdled his son’s tongue, who found it quite difficult to speak to him after that and ever since. 

So the lotus ponds became his battlefield, and its spoils were meager and glory underwhelming. 

Two miles down the road, past the dappled surface of the ponds, the unchanging horizon was swallowed by trees. Whenever he had the time Lee would find his way to that forest. He practiced the moves his aunt taught him in the company of hiding fauna. He climbed to the tops of the trees and stared out at the farmland and the Rock Estate, like a grey pebble dropped in the grass, only a smear of shale in the distance. He shared the leftovers of his lunch with the birds and squirrels and reveled when they came to trust him enough to take scraps from his fingers. In the forest he was a different person, not Rock Lee of the Lotus who wore his hands and feet raw in service of his family, but Lee the adventurer, the shinobi, the traverser of earth and sky. It was his escape when his cousins came home from the academy with tall tales of glory and founts of information they kept stoppered from him. They would jest, slap away his dirty hands, remark that he had no use for the knowledge until their mother or father shooed them off with assertions of the integrity of the opposing side of their family’s history. 

Lee had the distinct feeling that they chastised not to defend him, but their own honor. They never offered a kind word in his direction afterward, though at times he would get a pitying look, which he despised far more than the silence.

It was nearing the harvest season, and his cousins were home so Lee was in the woods, tracking the path of a narrow stream through its depths. Dead leaves crunched underfoot and the water burbled as it tumbled over the eroded roots of a towering oak; he stepped into the water, watched it split and fold around his sandals undeterred. He wished he were so flexible, that no matter the obstacle he could carve his path with that unending momentum. Yet humans were solid things and they did not cleave around their obstacles but break upon them like driftwood on the rocks. 

He stepped out on the other side and approached the oak. Its uppermost branches cleared the thickest of the canopy and from its height he wondered if he could see into the yard where his cousins may be practicing. Lee slung his bag over his shoulder, the bento within rattling hollowly, and hoisted himself onto the lowest branch. Ever since his failed stint at the Academy and his walk of shame back to his father he was barred from these things, allegedly for his safety but more likely to avoid further indignity to the family name, and he may have been a solid thing but he thought like a river, refusing to be dammed. He would learn, somehow, he was sure. It was within him as it was within all his kin. Surely it was. 

The branches thinned as he reached the canopy, then filled out again where the sun could reach them, sleek shafts of golden light reaching him through the leaves and illuminating his path. Up here even the air was different, the sweet sing of open sky on the tongue, a far cry from the earthy musk beneath the trees. He shimmied down the length of a wide bough until he could see through the leaves, parting them with one hand, the other grasping the bark. He breathed in, and it smelled like a hearth, burning carbon and falling ash.

Confused, he cast his gaze about. There was smoke on the horizon, beyond the fields, unfurling in a column of ash. Behind it the bleeding sun turned its edges amber. There should not be a burnoff this time of year, he thought, but he couldn’t figure out what else would cause such a blaze; at the base of the spiraling smoke he could see the barest flashes of flame, spreading further and further. It was like nothing he’d ever seen in his life. 

There is a feeling a creature gets upon gazing at the unknown, where the instinct of the gut sees its lack of familiarity for the terrible truth. It was a sinking feeling and it pulled him down, pressing his chest to the branch, clutching at it like a life-line and staring out at the distant inferno. He shrunk back like a frightened creature, as he was, though he did not yet know why.

As he stared and considered his options, east of the burn and far closer, he watched as the Rock Estate began to smolder. In moments its windows, indistinguishable from this distance, lit up and became visible; flames lapped from them like the tongues of a great beast, climbing up that slate roof, swallowing it in red and gold. 

He screamed. The birds in the surrounding trees took to the wing, wailing alongside him. 

By the time he dropped from the tree, skipping the last few branches and barely feeling the shock running up his legs as he landed, the smoke reached the clouds. He ran faster than he ever had in his life. He ate up the ground at a sprint, passing the ponds whose surface glowed grey and scarlet between the sprawl of each round green leaf, and when at last he reached the estate and his legs were nearly liquid underneath him, there were now two columns of smoke on the horizon.

He was fifteen years old when he staggered up the winding drive, choking on smoke, witnessing the destruction of all he’d ever known.

The months after were arduously difficult and for the first time in his life he longed for the tedious work of the harvest. There was little place for an orphan in his own village. For the first two turns of the moon he lived with the Rock family’s northwestern neighbor, helping the head of the house in the rice paddies and watching after their children when they went into town. But they had little to spare and an extra mouth to feed was more than they could support, so he left them when their eldest son returned home from his work in the capital. 

They apologized profusely and told him they would seek him out if they ever needed work, that they’d pay handsomely to make up for it. He did not want their money, but he appreciated the care they showed him and he left without a grudge. 

After that his life was transitory. He remembered little of those following weeks, begging for favors and sleeping in the spare stalls of the villagers’ stables. They all knew him well and gave what they could, whenever they could, though his family was not the only one to face arson and for all around living was tenuous. The Wind declared war, he learned from the dairy farmer, and they’d targeted the livelihoods of those who provided sustenance to the valley. Every village saw the greedy claws of their assault and shuddered in the face of it, destroyed by that which gave them their name and their honor. It was a terrible blow, the farmer’s wife said, cradling her baby close to her chest as if they might turn to ash in front of her. 

A terrible blow indeed, he thought. The wound it left behind stung him fiercely and his dreams were consumed by flame, waking him to a phantom agony that tore through him like a machete through undergrowth. Sliced apart, cut down to the ground.

The river of his soul was dammed. He could feel it. He did not want to be Rock Lee the adventurer anymore. 

Some weeks after, a messenger came to the home of the horse-breaker who was housing him at the time. He was summoned from the stable, hay clinging to his worn clothes, and the man informed him that his uncle was looking for him. He stared at him, uncomprehending. 

“My uncles died in the fire,” he said. His voice was unrecognizable to him, stretched thin like a hide over a rack. 

The man’s face tightened a little in what might be sympathy, though Lee had long since stopped seeing such a look, as one may grow blind to the surroundings in which they reside every day. “He is a distant uncle, part of the Hokage’s guard. Maito Gai?” 

The name seemed familiar. He blinked, unsure what he was supposed to say; evidently the messenger expected a response, so he inclined his head and hoped that would be sufficient. He was often rebuked for his chatter but what came so effortlessly before was a terrible struggle now. 

“Come with me, son,” the man said at last, apparently realizing there would not be much conversation. Lee followed him without complaint, figuring he might as well, as there was nowhere else to go and nothing else to do. 

Maito Gai was an animated man, so unlike the other soldiers of his family; if it were not for the prominent brow he might have doubted they were related at all. The moment Gai saw him he was wrapped in a hug so fierce that it popped some of the tension in his back. "Lee!" his voice was thunderous. "How you've grown! In the springtime of your youth, how wonderful. I haven't seen you since you were swaddled in a baby blanket!" 

Lee wondered how he could be so enthusiastic. Did he not miss them? Did he not share the immeasurable weight of grief? He remained silent and frozen even after Gai released him, a hand still lingering on his shoulder. 

Gai lived in Konoha proper, on the fringes of the military district in a small, beige-walled apartment. It was sparingly furnished, likely standard issue, though there were touches of life here and there: framed pictures on the bookshelf by the window, an ivy with browning leaves in the sill above the kitchen sink. Gai walked him down the hall. "Here's your room! It's a little bare, but we can go shopping tomorrow if you like." 

Lee stared at the futon in the corner. The blanket was green like the odd suit Gai was wearing. He should probably give his thanks; he opened his mouth with that intention, but said something else. 

"Why did you find me?" 

Maito Gai did not look surprised by the question, though his expression was subdued. “I received a letter only a few days ago. I came as soon as I could.” 

That didn’t seem like much of an answer to him. Lee looked away and Gai rested a hand on his shoulder again, fixing him with a gentle look. “I would not leave you there, Lee. We are family.” 

His vision began to blur; his family was dead, not even their livelihood left untouched. He did not have a family anymore. This man was a stranger to him. 

Gai let him be for the first night, though Lee could hear him pacing his room across the hall. It was not so strange to sleep in an unfamiliar place now, but he was left askance after this turn of events and thus spent the night wide awake, staring at the ghost of the ceiling in the blackness. He blew out the lamp on the table the moment he was left to his own devices as he could not stand the sight of its wick burning in the fringes of his vision. It was much preferred to face the dark. 

No sleep came to him but he laid very still as if it had, and he thought he could hear whispering but it could just as easily be a production of his mind. 

When morning came he sat across the table from his uncle and left his food largely untouched. Gai was deeply concerned, but he was able to postpone only some of his duties and leaving Lee alone in the apartment seemed a bad choice. He stepped out to speak to his neighbor and worried even about leaving him for that long. The boy had a terrible look about him. The details of Lee’s life after the fire were unknown to Gai at the time but it took no more than a look to know it had battered him. 

For once Kakashi made no complaints about doing him a favor. If he had, he would have apologized for them immediately after he followed Gai into the apartment and saw the boy still sitting at the table, staring down at the wood as though a plate were still in front of him. 

“I have to leave for a while, Lee!” Gai’s tone held a manufactured brightness about it as if he could speak optimism into existence. “Kakashi will keep you company until I get back, right, my dear rival?” 

Kakashi raised a hand in a casual wave when Lee raised his gaze. “Yo.” 

Lee did not think he needed someone to watch over him at his age, but he could not find the words to voice a protest. He supposed it was fine if it made the man feel better. It would be impolite to refuse his generosity.

To his immense gratitude, Kakashi also chose to give him space. He dropped onto the couch with a grunt, kicking his feet up on the coffee table and producing a book from his flak vest. Lee stayed where he was. There was not much to do in the absence of conversation but it was nice to have the silence. The only sounds were the thin rustle of turning pages and the echoes of birdsong on the other side of the window. 

He wasn’t sure how much time had passed before Kakashi finally spoke, though he thought perhaps the sun was a little higher in the sky. The silver-haired man didn’t look up from his novel, his mask obscuring any possible expression. “Have you been to Konoha before?” 

Lee opened his mouth well after a response would be expected; Kakashi’s chin lifted a little in surprise. “Once. I was sent to the Academy when I was thirteen.” 

“Is that so?” Kakashi turned another page. “That would make you a chuunin now, I’m guessing?” 

The words carried an odd sting; Lee stared at his hands. “No. I did not make it a year. I can only do taijutsu.” 

He thought of his aunt, the only member of his family that ever seemed willing to entertain his far-flung dreams of being a shinobi. The sting became a ferocious ache. 

To his surprise, Kakashi chuckled. He set the book aside and faced him, his one visible eye crinkled in a friendly manner. “The resemblance is uncanny.” 

Through him Lee learned that his uncle was similarly disadvantaged, and it was no longer such a surprise that the relationship between the man and his family was so strained that in fifteen years of life Lee had only a fleeting knowledge of him. It brought to him an unsettling realization, in the face of Gai's success as a shinobi, that excelling or failing was not the line his father drew to denote respect. 

When Gai returned from his duties to the Hokage, Lee engaged him for the first time of his own volition and asked him about his path. The light that filled his uncle's face was mingled delight and relief, edged in a barely present vein of anger, for his own father had always believed in him at the cost of his more disdainful family ties and yet Lee had grown up in the depths of that disdain. He seemed to disbelieve he had any ability at all now, but as Gai spoke there was a glimmer there in the depths of his dark eyes. Hopeful, perhaps. 

With his words Gai took a stone from the dam wall of Lee's river-soul and tossed it away. In the years that followed it would be slowly disassembled, and the gouges it left in the ground would never disappear though its flow was gradually restored. 

He asked if Lee would like to attend again, and his mouth was dry with shock as he agreed. 

His life began to take a structure resembling normalcy, if worlds different from the normalcy he knew before. Gai was endlessly accommodating and Lee warmed up to him gradually as his first days at the academy approached. He sparred with the jounin most evenings; it was clear he missed out on a great deal of improvement, so with renewed dedication he threw himself into his training at any free moment under Gai’s instruction. It filled his mind where his thoughts had gone quiet, like fresh shoots of hope in a pot of dead branches, and he tended it desperately. He had no place in Konoha but if he was a shinobi he might find one. He could make friends. The thought was thrilling.

He was a few years older than the other incoming students but he paid no mind to any jests in his direction, aimed at that or his lack of ability. His thoughts were sharp-focused, fixated on that single goal, and he couldn’t succeed if he let their words get to him. His teammates were another obstacle he refused to be deterred by; Neji and Tenten found him as strange as they did Gai, and Neji in particular seemed to despise his very presence at first. Lee was well-used to proving himself by now, however, and the results of being incapable of doing so. He would show them he was worth believing in. In that way, he could find himself worthy, too. 

If he didn’t, he wasn’t sure what was left of him.

\----------------------------------

“Is this the best mission we could get?” Neji asked. The words came out strained; he was bent at the waist, a basket of rice seedlings in the crux of one elbow, and with his free hand he alternated between planting them in the water and pushing back the length of his dark hair. If he wasn’t quick enough it would drop into the water and the ends were already soaked. He looked about as far from regal as he ever had.

“The greatest mission a shinobi can complete is that of philanthropy, Neji!” Gai responded. “Now, whoever finishes first will get first pick at dinner!” 

“Who cares about first pick?” Tenten had a smear of mud across her temple; she reached up to wipe the sweat from her brow and left a second, near-identical smear. “The food you bring is always awful!” 

“Lee does, apparently.” Neji narrowed his eyes. Across the field, Lee was already halfway done with his rows, moving as quickly as he could without ruining the perfectly even lines. If he kept his head down and focused on his work he couldn’t see the shoddily-repaired roof of the rice farmer’s home, the stack of burnt planks in the grass at the edge of the paddy. He was sure he could still taste wet ash in the air but his teammates had looked at him oddly when he mentioned it. Since then he’d been uncharacteristically silent, grounding himself with the feeling of silty water around his ankles and the tender stalks of the shoots in his hand. 

It was not so bad. He admittedly shared his fellows’ dislike of the food but a victory was a victory. Neji and Tenten sped up their efforts but by now it was too late; he raised his empty basket with a cheer and Gai applauded him lavishly. 

“Well done, Lee!” 

“Thank you, sir!” His uncle was never stingy with praise but he soaked it up each time as if he were starved of it. But now he had no distraction but watching his fellows complete their task, and he could taste the ash on his tongue, his hands coming back to his sides and trembling a little. 

Gai took one look at him and knew, as he always did now that they were acquainted with each other. He walked along the side of the paddy and clapped Lee on the shoulder, rattling the panic out of him for a moment. “One last task, my adorable pupil, if you’re willing to take it while your friends finish up.” 

“I am, sir.” He would always respond in the affirmative but there was emphasis in it this time. A distraction was just what he needed. Tenten shot him a grateful look. 

“Gorou-san is in need of firewood, and he was kind enough to let us have some if we chop it for him.” Gai pointed in the direction of the treeline, and Lee needed no more prompting than that. 

Stepping into the cool shadows of the trees with an axe resting on one shoulder, Lee had the keen feeling of being somewhere familiar and yet unfamiliar; the pattern of these woods were unknown to him but when he breathed in the petrichor was the same. He took his time finding a suitable tree, fingertips running over their bark, wondering how quickly he could scale their flanks now. If he gathered the wood in record time perhaps he could get away with it, and no one would know he’d gone off-task.

With that thought and a silent apology to Gai he shimmied his way up the trunk, sighing as the breeze caught his hair and swept it off his neck. The ground fell away in a featureless bed of brown and gold; up here was only the wind and the birds, swiftly vacating the upper branches and squawking their disdain. He sat on the branch and let his legs swing, feeling the tension inside him start to unfurl. It was not so bad, not at all. If he didn’t breach the veil of the leaves he could even pretend that he wasn’t here. It was a pleasantly timeless place. 

The wind changed direction and sent his hair into his eyes; he sputtered and shook it out, pushing his bangs back. The branches parted against it and let in a spill of pale sunlight. He should probably stop dawdling before the lack of noise drew attention. Lee pulled his feet up to crouch on the branch, ready to descend, when he heard it. Rustling leaves, footsteps somewhere further in the thicket. At once he was tense and straining his ears: were his teammates already searching for him? It seemed to come from the opposite direction from the paddies. He was glad to have the axe with him though by now he felt he had a fighting chance of defending himself on his own rights. It wasn’t the time to test the theory.

Resorting to what little he could mold of his chakra, Lee moved from branch to branch and searched for the source of the sound. A flicker of movement had him pressing himself down until the foliage obscured him; there was a boy below him, stepping carefully through the leaf litter. His hair and his clothes were shades of red and he had a gourd strapped to his back. Lee watched as he turned his head in a wide arc, looking for something - for him? He didn’t know and didn’t want to find out. He was wondering if he could make a quiet escape when the boy turned on his heel and looked northward, and the weak sun caught the headband fastened to the strap at his hip. 

A Sand shinobi. 

Lee was distantly aware of a ringing in his ears. The ground swung up towards him in a blur of autumn color; he’d leapt off the branch, he realized, axe readied in his hands, aimed at the juncture between the stranger’s neck and shoulder. He breathed in and it smelled of fire. The boy’s head snapped up and turned in his direction, but it was too late now, it would be the last thing he ever saw- 

His momentum was stopped midair. Sand had spilled from the gourd and caught the blade, holding him firmly in place, and he met the pale eyes of the shinobi for a single heartbeat before he was flung away. His back hit the tree and all the breath went out of him. He barely felt it. His skin felt like it was thrumming, his breathing ragged even to his own ears. He staggered to his feet. 

“Murderers,” he panted. The other stared at him, expressionless. He raised a hand and aborted the motion just as quickly.

Wherever his sense had been a few moments ago, it was long gone now. Lee raced at him again, shouting the word, voice cracking on the middle syllable; his feet felt nimbler than ever, catharsis so close he could taste it. The shinobi fled and he pursued. Words were said but he didn’t hear them. Blue light fringed his vision and the distance between himself and his target vanished in a blink, fearsome strength flooding his every pore. 

He raised the axe but one hand refused to cooperate, singing with pain that only faintly breached his consciousness. The first blow was clumsy, slamming the broad side of the axehead into his shoulder and sending him flying forward in a heap at the base of a tree. The sand rose with a foul snarl, arcing in a deadly curve, and he knew he only had moments before it would catch up to him and his chance would be gone. 

But it would be worth it, to get revenge.

His working hand gripped the head of the axe. He raised it above his head. The enemy knew he was cornered; he was looking up, eyes wide and pupils narrowed into fine sky-blue points. The terror of imminent death had blanched his face but he did not scream or cower. He faced it, even as he shook, even as light danced on the edge of the sharpened blade. 

And in that moment all that occurred had caught up to Lee. He froze, staring into those horrified eyes. They were the same age if he had to guess. This did not look like a battle-hardened shinobi...his cheeks were gaunt and his dark-rimmed eyes were sunken with exhaustion, as if he hadn’t seen a warm bed or a full meal in several days. 

He wondered if that was what he looked like a year ago.

The axe slipped from his hand and hit the ground. Sand seized him up and flung him away again and it hurt much worse this time, branches snagging his hair as he landed in a shrub. He spat organic matter and blood and it caught in the granules as they wrapped around him, pressing the breath from his lungs. This was the end he was sure, destined to go the way his name had gone, and all because he could not land that final blow. 

The sand pulled away like filaments drawn to a magnet, hissing through the air. The stranger was watching him, an indescribable flurry of emotions crossing his face though none of them anger; the sand enveloped him and then he was gone, vanished, as if he was never there at all. 

Lee scrambled free of the bush and collapsed. Pain chewed through his every nerve; he looked at his hands and one sat at an odd angle on his wrist, unresponsive. He groaned. He had his chance and he lost it...but the Sand ninja had his chance, too, and hadn’t taken it. He didn’t know what to think of that or the horrible, disturbing rage that had possessed him. 

Neji’s voice cut through the throbbing at his temples and his teammate shot into sight, the skin around his eyes taut and ribbed with the force of the byakugan. The moment he saw Lee he dropped next to him and pulled him up by the shoulders. “What happened?” he asked and his voice was forceful in its anger but his expression brimmed with concern. 

Lee answered honestly, if uselessly. “I do not know.” 

Tenten wrapped his hand while Neji and Gai searched the forest. He apologized profusely for not getting the firewood but barely got the words out before they were dismissed. It didn’t silence the shame; he had not only left his task incomplete but risked his neck and injured himself, and for what? He was still unsure. He wasn’t surprised when the search came up empty and they left for home in a state of agitation, second-guessing every flickering shadow and shifting movement. But whoever he was, he must have abandoned the notion of vengeance entirely for their return trek was peaceful.

The memory of what took place in those woods followed Lee through the years; a narrow victory earned him the label of chuunin, his teammates became his friends, his uncle and his lackadaisical neighbor fathers he never had. He met other Sand ninja on the battlefield and he did not hesitate again, though at night he stared into the dark and saw a phantom of those eyes, pale as sea-glass. 

The war waged on unabated and he served his part. But he never regretted sparing that stranger’s life, even as he struggled to put words to the reason why. 


	2. Destiny, at Death's Door

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _”You cannot see your tracks in the snow.”_ It looked away from him, and the cold felt more tangible now. Lee followed its gaze and the dunes were muffled in white, white like the beast’s teeth, still transient underfoot. It spread on and on in all directions and he could see no end to it, could not even place the line between cloudless, pallid sky and earth. Barren and dead, from the heavens downward. _”How will you know if you’re walking in circles?”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> mind the rating. explicit depictions of warfare, injury, and death lay ahead.

In Fire Country there is a festival held during the rains that mark the end of winter and beginning of spring, when the frost-barren creeks swell their banks and the creatures in the grasses and trees stir and shake the chill from their bodies. In the Valley it did not snow even on its coldest days, though the leaves would shed in earthen tones from the branches and the grasses blanched and dried as the sun's light weakened. The dullness of this landscape saw woollen clouds that stretched from one horizon to another and rarely gave precipitation; they would linger there until the spring thermals came off the coast and brought warmth and humidity, at which point, full to bursting, they would surrender a torrential downpour that did not cease for days.

Through the rain what was dead came to live again, and the festival was a harbinger of this occasion. In every village massive oilskins in a cacophony of colors were strung from one roof to another, sheltering the walkways below and each step beneath them was heralded by the gentle drumming of raindrops overhead. A traveller making their way through the barren hills would see, shrouded in heady mist, the glow of many lanterns and the lines of suspended cloths weaving throughout like many patchwork veins. The air grew perfumed with the blooms of winter honeysuckle and camellia, jasmine and hellebore, weaved in cascading arrangements from every still surface; tables of wares and street food flanked the main footpaths in enticing reach, all glimmer and smoke and elaborately constructed displays; and all this trapped beneath those makeshift roofs, the steady rain drawing the air up warm and thick and stagnant. 

Lee was born in the middle of the First Rain; he was glad for that, as his birthday always had ample celebration. Yet his first after the fire began as a miserable occasion, spent mostly in the security of his room in Gai’s apartment. The vented window brought a yeasty smell into the flat and he sat silent, remembered shaking out lotus pods in the sitting room for the paste his aunt would fold into dough and steam, the sticky heat of the buns on his fingers when he plucked them impatiently from the plate. If he closed his eyes he could see the covered porch, rain falling in a fierce pale sheet from the rafters and rushing into the dry gully that was etched in the earth next to the walkway. He could feel the damp wood underfoot, the scratch of the rattan chair at his back. He could feel his father’s hand on his shoulder. It was a terribly cavernous feeling, as though he’d been cut open and hollowed out.

His teammates were at a loss for how to console him and they lingered as worrisome fixtures about the sitting room, exchanging tentative looks and soft murmurs, but it was Neji who at last opened his door and grabbed his hand, marching him out of the apartment and onto the stairs. “You’re worrying everyone,” he said, “you’re not doing yourself any favors, sulking like that.” As he walked Neji refused to look in his direction, not even as he pressed a paper sack into Lee’s free palm.

“I brought you some taiyaki. They’re very good.” 

Lee’s ensuing smile felt as if it might split his face in two. The air out in the street embraced them, heavy and humid. 

Five years on he did not need the prompting anymore, but when they all met up in the square Neji would always bring him the taiyaki from the stand set up in front of the compound gate; he had a thing about tradition, as they all did in some way or another. Lee could see the benefit in constructing new rituals to fill the voids of ones that were lost. By the afternoon Tenten would find him after braving the sea of bodies with some new weapon glinting in its sheaf of paper, and they’d trek to the relative solitude of the indoor arena where she could test its mettle. Battle was a bond that lashed them all together and for them to spar was the equivalent of a lively conversation: it made tangible the silent connections between them, for knowing how to best counter one's opponent is to know them deeply. It was touching in that way when Tenten blocked his strikes, an expertly thrown blade breaking his combination, to know he occupied a place in someone's mind.

When they were worn out and the soft dwell of twilight tinged the sheets of rainfall mauve, they would meet on the balcony at the Academy building. Gai was waiting for them, a box of sparklers in one hand and matches in the other. They leaned in close as he lit each end, garish light springing forth and blooming across the dark stone floor; Lee put on his best begging face until Tenten surrendered and swapped his orange sparkler for her green one. 

"Well, my precious nephew,” Gai said, bringing his hands together in a loud clap that startled Neji, who was engrossed in some taijutsu scroll he nabbed off a vendor; Gai didn’t notice the peevish look in his direction. "Are you going to make a wish or not?"

Lee clasped his sparkler in two hands, staring intently at its virescent tip, and thought about what he wanted most. Every year his wish was the same: to be the best shinobi he could be. He liked to think it was coming true, little by little, but as he turned the wish over and over in his mind he thought instead of a quiet horizon. No distant rumble of desperate battle in the brush, no smoke smudging the sky. 

"What'd you wish for?" Tenten asked; she looked intrigued and the reflection of his expression in her eyes was oddly pensive.

He smiled. "I cannot tell you, or it will not come true." 

She crossed her arms over her chest and gave him an exaggerated sour look. "Fine, fine." He snickered and she bumped her shoulder against his. “I hope it comes true, whatever it is.” 

What would they do when the war was over? He had a life before it all went south but it was gone now. The estate lay a blackened corpse on the hillside, his by right just like his past of terrible endurance. He had a life now but it was reared on the battlefield, his every bond forged there like weapons, his own destiny to be one. Yet his past and his future were separate, he liked to remind himself, and there was always the wonderful possibility that the future could be better.

“Me too.”

Would he ever go back home, though? Lee thought about returning to the estate, rebuilding its quiet halls board by board until it looked as if it were never lost in the first place. In his mind he walked from room to renewed room, but all was empty and ominously silent.

He watched the sparkler crackle and glimmer until it reached the end of its wick and fizzled out.

* * *

When the clouds were spent and the tarps were pulled from the roofs, all fell back into a steady rhythm. In the years since he met the shinobi of the Wind in a familiar-unfamiliar wood, the experience was beginning to slip away from him. It sat in the depths of his long-term memory but no longer took precedence over every other battle he’d fought in the meantime, rising in countless numbers, dulling the horror of blood and demise with the blunt edge of conventionality. 

Lee did what he had to do, what was expected of him, as was his way. When it was tradition and expected not just of him but everyone around him, it seemed to defy any judgment he felt against the way things were. And it wasn’t difficult to dissociate from such musing on the battlefield; there, his motivation was solely to keep his friends alive, and that he could do. In his room was where the second-guessing began when he had nothing to face but his thoughts and recollections. He’d taken after Gai in his ruthless pursuit of physical prowess and the constant training provided a fine distraction for him, at least. At this point not even his downstairs neighbor was surprised by the constant noise coming from his flat. He had a good life, he reminded himself over and over, full of wonderful people. What was important was to focus on the blessings, and he may have been hardened by his experiences but they hadn’t managed to beat the optimism out of him yet.

He was in the middle of his morning routine and these circular thoughts when a knock came to his door; he rose out of a plank, pushing his braid back over his shoulder and opening it. “Tenten! It is good to see you, would you like some coffee?” 

Tenten looked weary, her buns messily fastened and her eyes still thick with sleep. It was an early hour for everyone else; the sun had only just reared its head over the domed roofs of the village, not yet strong enough to tempt a citizen from their bed after a week of festivities, but Lee had been up for some time already and was sufficiently bright-eyed. Tenten’s smile tinted with a fond envy. 

“I appreciate the offer, but I don’t think we’ll have time. Tsunade-sama wants to see us.” 

“Oh!” He moved to retrieve his sandals in the entryway. “We must not keep her waiting, then!” 

The streets were quiet around them but for the coos of pigeons on the roofs and the song of the breeze. Lee tipped back his head towards the sun and inhaled the pastoral clarity of the air. “Is Neji coming?” 

“I think she asked for him first. Now that he’s a jounin it’s like we live in different worlds, huh?” 

“He has done well for himself,” Lee hummed affectionately.

“Yeah, but pretty soon he won’t be able to boss us around anymore, right?” She jabbed his side with her elbow, grinning. “This is gonna be our year, I just know it.” 

He mirrored her beaming expression. “I think you are right, Tenten.” 

Lee rather liked Lady Tsunade. She was a cunning and sharp woman; at times he couldn't be sure if she disliked him or not, and whether she regarded him with fondness or frustration seemed to vary by the day, but she was an efficient leader. They ascended the stairs to the Hokage’s office where Neji stood in front of the desk, back straight at attention. Tsunade regarded their approach from behind her folded hands, elbows resting on the wood. 

“Good morning, Hokage-sama!” he said on a friendly wave. She only dipped her head in acknowledgment, a faintly amused smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth. 

“I was just informing your squad leader about your newest mission.” Tsunade pushed a folder across the desk and Neji picked it up, flipping through the papers at a cursory glance; Lee peered over his shoulder but before he could get a glance the jounin snapped the folder shut. “We have reason to believe, thanks to the intel Team 10 gathered on the western front, that Suna has been moving troops over Tenchi Bridge.” 

“Tenchi Bridge?” Tenten’s brows drew together. “But that’s so close to the Hidden Rain - they’d have to cross through the heart of it just to get there.” 

It was not typical of Suna’s strategy so far, from what Lee discerned; the southern borderlands were most preferable for Sand shinobi, who had little experience fighting in woodland, where the land was hardly more than hillside and lush grass. He’d led many assaults awry by luring the enemy into the thicket, and the northernmost parts of the land of Fire were nothing but. Other than the element of surprise - hardly enough to counter the strategic shortcomings - he saw little benefit to using the bridge.

“The Kazekage must have reached an agreement with Amegakure, somehow,” Lee said, finding it the only reasonable explanation, even in its inherent rarity: of any village, that of the Hidden Rain was the most impenetrable. 

Tsunade nodded. “That’s our fear. But we won’t know more until we investigate, and that’s where you come in. I’ve picked your team because the byakugan should let you scope it out from a distance. Figure out how many soldiers are moving through there and where they’re going.” 

She rose from her chair in a fluid movement and the weak sunlight from the far window splayed over her shoulders. Her face, backlit and wreathed in shadow, was set in solemn lines. “Hopefully this won’t be more than a field mission, but you understand what can happen.” 

Lee inclined his head. He knew. On either side his teammates did the same. 

“That’s the other reason I picked you three - if it comes to a fight, you’ll be forced into close combat by the terrain. I trust that will be well within your abilities.” 

“Certainly,” Tenten said and Lee nodded in enthusiastic agreement. If there was ever a mission where taijutsu would be most effective, their team was always first choice. It made him feel good, proud, wanted, even in this disjointed way. The warmth of recognition reached out gentle fingers and snuffed out the chill of the Hokage’s warning. Already he was shifting his weight on the balls of his feet, keen to be off.

“We’ll leave at sundown,” Neji said, and Tsunade said, “Are you ready?”

Tenten could barely voice her agreement before Lee opened his mouth. “I am always ready! We will not let you down, Tsunade-sama!” 

“Lee.” Neji gave him that look that said _volume_. He flushed a little, though to her credit Tsunade only looked amused by his enthusiasm. She dismissed them with a wave of her hand, gaze pulling downward as if caught on her paperwork, though Lee knew the moment the doors closed behind them she would put as much distance between herself and that desk as she could. 

They converged at Lee’s apartment as they always did these days to prepare their supplies. When they were still genin, Gai's apartment was the preferred location; by now they had their own places and Gai was more often than not occupied on missions with Kakashi, so the duty of hosting his teammates fell on Lee. He never minded. If anything, their presence filled the cavernous emptiness of his quarters. Lee wasn't used to being alone. He could not name a single period in his life, aside from the tremulous weeks after the fire, where his livingspace was only occupied by himself. Privacy was a luxury but one he seemed to care little about.

Lee was the only one among them that was good at cooking - one had to be, sharing a home with Gai, whose open-hearted and giving nature did great things for the discouraged, but little for proper seasoning - and he focused on making curry, murmuring to himself as he set pots on the stove and measured out ingredients. He hadn't a clue how long they'd be out in the field but he'd learned enough from past missions to know that erring on the side of over-preparation was the best route. The apartment filled with the aroma of turmeric, ginger and roasting garlic.

Tenten dropped onto the couch, kicking up her feet on the coffee table. Neji gave her a stricken look as he took the armchair with perfectly polite posture. Tenten rolled her eyes at him and pulled her backpack into her lap. “So, what’s the plan?” she asked. 

Neji was still eying her feet like he could compel her into fine etiquette with the force of his stare. It was a hopeless effort; he gave up and opened Tsunade’s file, resting it on his knees and grimacing at Tenten’s smug grin. “We’ll set up camp on our side of the river,” he said, “and watch for soldiers, as she requested. But I believe if they’re traveling across the bridge, they have to have a bivouac somewhere nearby.” 

“Did Team 10 mention anything about a bivouac?” Tenten laid her scrolls out in a long line on the coffee table, a rainbow of deadly seals, and began picking through them with an intent furrowing of her brow.

“Nothing in Shikamaru’s notes, no. But strategically there must be one nearby, on one side of the bridge or the other, and I really doubt it’d be on our side.”

“That would make sense,” Lee remarked thoughtfully, dropping a cinnamon stick into the simmering sauce. “It is a long way to travel with no place to rest.” 

“Exactly. And if we can find it, we can interrupt their supply lines and disrupt their campaign.” Lee could hear the frown in Neji’s voice. “Whatever their campaign is. I’d like to figure out what is going on in Rain Country, too, if they’ve made an alliance or not.” 

“Or not?” Lee turned around to look at him. 

“They may have been conquered,” Neji said darkly. The thought sent an unpleasant ripple through Lee’s belly; an alliance would be bad news, but if Suna assumed control of Rain Country they were much worse off. The Hidden Rain had no Kage to speak of and no consistent defense of their borders beyond the village, the strip of land between Wind and Fire acting as a no-man’s land of sorts where battles took place on neither warring nation’s home soil. It was difficult enough to fend off Suna's advances without their border turning into that of an active enemy. 

And more importantly, considering the Kazekage's warpath thus far and the scorched-earth ruthlessness with which he pursued his goals, if he'd taken Amegakure by force…

“Let’s hope not, for their sake and ours,” Tenten muttered. “Either way, if there’s an encampment there’s bound to be guards. We’ll have to be careful.” 

“Do you think there will be Ame ninja manning the bridge?” Lee turned back to his cooking, unable to shake that unsettled feeling. It was like an unseen shift in the tide, rippling outward through the surf and washing over the shore, unpredictable.

“If there are, I guess that would answer our question,” Neji said. 

He supposed that was true. The heavy weight of their conversation laid muffling quiet over the flat, only the occasional clack of wooden spoon against cast-iron, the turning of pages and the rustle of scrolls.

“Are you bringing the scythe?” Lee asked Tenten, keen to fill the silence and guide their thoughts elsewhere. It was her newest acquisition, procured on the last day of the festival and tested twice since. It was fearsome enough to face her on the training field, the weapon in one nimble hand, the ruthless curve of its blade aimed at his heart. He wouldn’t envy the one who had to face her in battle.

Tenten snorted a laugh. “It’s not a scythe, Lee. It’s a fauchard- and I think I will.” She picked through the scrolls with the affectionate delicacy of a florist displaying their finest bouquets; at last she settled on one, laced with red-orange around the edges in a subtle but intricate pattern. 

"I see," he said. He did not see. He never quite understood the difference between the great many weapons she stored in those rolls of parchment, no matter how many times she described it to him or how many times he tried to learn. He supposed that was alright. Weapons were Tenten's specialty, and her intimate knowledge of them was incomparable; he was capable enough with weaponry to defend himself in a fight, and he had her to thank for what little experience he did possess. 

“I think I’m gonna take a nap before we have to go.” Tenten rose from the floor and arched her back in a stretch, the start of her sentence warped by a yawn. “Lee, do you mind if I crash on the couch?”

“Feel free!” Lee chirped over his shoulder. “Neji, do you-” 

“No,” he responded, not even looking up from his lap. He’d exchanged the file for a book; Lee couldn’t see the cover from this angle, but what he could see of the script was tiny and crowded, scribbled notes filling the scant margins. 

“Okay!” He turned back to the burners, masking his smirk. He gave it thirty minutes.

“What about you, Lee?” Tenten stretched out on the couch, pillowing her head on her arm. “You looked like you were up early.” 

“Ah, well.” He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “I actually did not finish my morning routine, so I would like to finish it before we leave for our mission.” 

“Oh my god,” Neji said, “you’re going to pass out before we get there.” 

“I will not!” Lee made an indignant noise. “I can easily finish my training and complete the mission! In fact, I could double my reps, no, triple them–” 

Tenten laid a hand over her eyes. “Please don’t.” 

“Aha!” He pointed at victorious finger at her. “So you admit that I can do it, or else you would not ask me not to.” 

“I’m sorry I ever questioned your abilities,” Neji sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. Lee beamed, satisfied. “Just...take it easy, we might be in the field for a while.” 

Appealing to strategy worked much better to silence Lee’s flights of fancy. He could not argue with that logic and reluctantly reserved himself to only his initial planned regimen..but he _knew_ he could do triple-time, and his teammates knew that too, and that was all that mattered.

Neji was out within fifteen, both a new record and testament to his own early rising, nodding over the pages and tipping slowly to one side. Lee watched out of the corner of his eye and when the book at last fell slack in his lap Lee was safe to breeze out of the kitchen and open the closet, reaching to pull blankets from the highest shelf. He laid one over Tenten and the other, much more cautiously, over Neji; he stirred a little and Lee froze in place, waiting, until he sank back into the chair with the breath of a sigh. He smoothed the edge of the blanket with one hand and seized the book with the other, setting it aside on the table. 

They may tease his predictability but they were not much better, he thought affectionately. He backtracked to the kitchen to fill their bentos with the curry, steam curling around the edges of the lids as he snapped them down, and came to sit cross-legged on the sitting room floor. He did intend to do his exercises, but there was a more important routine to complete first, that which soothed that deep internal anxiety that always took hold of him before a mission.

He began with Tenten’s bag. Her scrolls, meticulously organized according to a system he couldn’t hope to comprehend, he left untouched. The rest of her rations were a different story altogether. By the time she pored over every possible weapon and made her selections, she had little patience for organizing the bulk of her supplies. Lee took out each item in turn, counting the bandages in her medical kit and checking the edges of her kunai for nicks; he tipped the box of senbon backs-first into his palm and discarded one that was bent down the middle. When he was sure that everything was in perfect condition, double-checking just in case, he put everything back in an orderly fashion.

Neji, by contrast, packed scrupulously and didn’t appreciate having his bags trifled with, even with the best of intentions. Lee pushed past the internal fretting that worried for errors gone unnoticed - he trusted them, they were both brilliant shinobi and people who never needed his hand-holding, but still he fretted - and only placed Neji’s bento in the back pocket. To silence the circular train of worrisome thought he picked up where his morning routine left off, 500 press-ups first. Midway through his mind fell blissfully quiet, only the strain of his muscles and the beat of his pulse grounding him where he was.

He woke them when the sun began to slip off the edge of the sky, spilling carmine across the horizon. In the lurid hues of evening they set out from Konoha on the northwestern road. It made for unpleasant treading as the torrential rains left it muddy and pockmarked, but to Lee it was the loveliest backdrop, for the sky was never so stunning as after the first rains. The light that slanted through the clouds glowed brilliant shades of fuschia and violet, and the reddish orange of the sun fit up against it, a thumb-smear of paint at the band of the horizon. The fields on either side, though dead-leaved and frangible, were alive: the rain had lured out the insects, and small black birds swooped over the dry grasses on knife-edged wings, startling the bugs aloft and seizing them in their wide gaping bills. Their graceful, acrobatic flight was a captivating dance. 

The sun dipped beneath the trees and the sky washed in dusky blue, and around them the landscape was gradually cluttering. On the backs of the fields were spots of defiant brush, growing denser and denser until they were flanked on both sides by cool, quiet woodland, a blend of bare-branched broadleafs and eternally verdant conifers. The further they went the greener their surroundings, and the air took on the aroma of pine sap. At that point, growing nearer to their destination, they slipped off the road and took to the cover of the forest. 

A forest on a wintry night is an eerie thing. What was a vibrant green in daylight was muted and deep under the moon, and the stark pale-dark shadows striped over their backs as they traveled through the trees. In the far distance an owl’s throaty hoot diffused through the wood, coming to their ears warbled and uncanny. Lee moved in step at Neji’s right and tried to pay his surroundings only clinical attention. The bad feeling worsened all the while, the further they traveled, even as the byakugan revealed no scouts or opposition and the breeze remained brittle, but peaceable. 

The treeline did not thin when they found their way back to the road, rather stopped in a single line, each in lockstep with its neighbor. Beyond it the bridge loomed, an elegant red arch over the dizzying drop of the cliffs on either side. The river below was heavy with flood and roared, tumbling end over end amongst the rocks in a frothing white line. They stayed where it was dark and thicketed. Neji set up his position on the low, dense branch of a towering pine, and Lee and Tenten settled themselves on either side of its trunk, watching the ground while he watched everything around them, searching for the azure flickers of chakra that were to their eyes wholly undetectable. 

For all Lee’s silent apprehension on the journey up here, absolutely nothing happened. They sat for hours, the moon tracking its way across the sky, seeing and hearing no indication of the movement they were sent to find. They ate their prepared meals and went back to watching. He grew frustrated. Missions like these were his least favorite sort, requiring a stillness he struggled to cultivate, let alone at this duration. He shifted his weight atop the root and sighed. 

“This is boring,” Tenten whispered conspiratorially from the other side of the wood. 

“Yeah,” he whispered back. A faint thump, Neji drawing his heel down on the branch above them. They dropped low like academy students caught chattering in class, stifling their giggles. Lee didn’t want to be a distraction but he _was_ bored; after a moment of thought he reached into his bag and retrieved his notebook. 

I think he is bored too, he wrote on a blank sheet and tore it out, folding the paper over the pencil and passing it around the tree. 

Scribbling, then the soft organic sound of the note being tossed to the ground by his foot. He picked it up and unfolded the paper. Below his scrawl Tenten drew a caricature of Neji, its pencil-lined brows pulled down in an exaggerated frown and its mouth preserved mid-shout, stick arms crossed over its chest. Lee had to cover his mouth to stop a laugh from spilling out. 

“I can see that,” Neji said furiously and Lee was no longer able to contain his laughter. He wasn’t blessed with Neji’s expansive vision but he could practically see the exasperated scowl on his face. “God, I hate both of you.” 

“Chill out,” Tenten said airily. “It’s a good portrait, you can have it if you want.” 

“I do _not_ look like that.” 

“What do you think, Lee?” She leaned around to cut eyes at him and he pursed his lips, trying to maintain a serious façade. 

“Tenten is a very good artist.” 

Neji drew in a breath so harshly that they could hear it whistling through his nose from where they sat. “You’re going to get us killed,” he said. “And it won’t even matter, because I’m going to kill you both before they get here.” 

He let out his breath on an incensed sigh when all he got in return was giggling. 

They had enough sense not to make more ruckus and the trees were wreathed in silence again, though Lee felt a little better. That bad feeling was starting to ease off, slipping away like falling cloth. 

The relief did not appear to be universal, as within the hour Neji descended from the tree, looking frustrated. “Something’s not right,” he said. “Shikamaru said they observed movements on every fourth night for the past three weeks. We should’ve seen them by now.” 

“Do you think they saw us coming?” Tenten said; Lee felt guilty for engaging in silliness now. 

“Maybe. But I haven’t seen a single signature, I don’t know who would’ve spotted us.” Neji rubbed between his eyes with a thumb. Keeping watch for so long, he must’ve earned a pretty bad headache. Lee didn’t check the jounin’s gear but he’d fought alongside him for years and knew he’d almost certainly forgotten to pack his salve. 

Knowing that, and never missing an opportunity to offer his assistance, he was prepared. He reached for the spare tin in the pouch at his hip and passed it over, earning a rare grateful look from Neji. He dipped his thumb and smeared the salve between over his brow.

Lee looked out at the clearing ahead, still as a grave and bedded in shadow, the pale edge of pre-dawn washing out its darkest hues. “Should we scout further? Or just wait here?” 

“I don’t know.” Neji wiped his hand on his pant leg, still frowning. Lee thought it miraculous that he didn’t have a permanent line between his brows by now. “I don’t want to take risks when we don’t know what we’re dealing with.” 

“We can’t go back empty-handed,” Tenten said. She was glaring at the smear of salve on Neji’s clothes, a mirror of their earlier standoff in Lee’s flat. Neji shrugged at her. “Maybe we should look across the bridge.” 

No sooner had she said those words than Lee felt his trepidation flare up tenfold. Neji swore under his breath. “Move,” he said, and they dodged as one with the practiced instinct of hardened shinobi; a tagged kunai landed and exploded in a heavy plume of smoke, right where they were standing a moment before. 

Tenten muttered, “oh, there they are,” and Lee looked and immediately realized that they’d been looking in the wrong direction. 

They were flanked from behind, a dozen or so shinobi watching from above the dull sheen off their rebreathers. Well, the Hidden Rain must be fine, Lee thought crossly. “I still can’t _see_ them,” he heard Neji say, and how was that possible? 

They were hopelessly outnumbered and their only route of escape was on the other side of the enemy. There was nowhere to go but over the bridge. If they were at all uncertain of the decision, the Rain shinobi made the choice for them: a silent signal rippled between them and they began to advance. A dry _shck_ to his left and Tenten was unrolling one of her black-fringed scrolls; she tossed it outward and it rippled in the air, bringing forth a glittering wave of senbon and the vaguely fruity aroma of their poisoned points. In front of the scroll the opposition was forced to swerve away, and behind it the Leaf ran, over the bridge and into the unfamiliar wood beyond.

So quickly it had gone south.

Under the dense shield of needled conifers they raced like cornered prey. Their skills meant nothing on unfamiliar terrain; it was enough to keep attacks off their backs but not much beyond. They passed under a fallen tree wider than the three of them put together, its roots upturned and clawing at the sky in a final mortal desperation, and just as they cleared it there was a sickening snap. Tenten yelped. Lee slammed his heels into the ground and about-faced. Half-sunken into the rotted wood were the long-toothed jaws of a metal trap, so close to her head that it disturbed him to see it. One steel fang pierced through the dull canvas of her backpack, through her biggest scroll, and pinned her aloft. 

“Tenten!” He grabbed at the fabric and pulled hard, the point of her shoulder jabbing his side as she struggled, but it wouldn’t give. He heard Neji’s shout, the distant crack and rattle of brushfighting.

“Leave it,” she hissed through her teeth. He found his kunai and cut the straps and she dropped to the ground, already in a mad dash the moment her feet touched the earth. He caught the mournful look she cast over her shoulder as he followed on her heels. Her scrolls, once immaculately organized, were spilling onto the leaf litter below, the crunch of them hitting the ground fading from earshot. 

“I am so sorry, Tenten,” he puffed. She shook her head. 

“Replaceable. Besides, I’ve got all I need.” Tenten’s fingers fell to her hip, where her smallest scrolls were tied. 

They reached Neji just as he slammed his fingers into the middle of his opponent’s chest and sent the ninja flying. He spun around to face them and he was wild-eyed. There was nothing comforting about seeing fear in your squad leader’s face, but he’d never seen such a look on Neji. His stomach made a spiraling descent. They kept running. 

“We’re sitting ducks,” Neji lamented. He stalled and swung his head back, avoiding the trajectory of a kunai with reflexes that could only belong to a Hyuga; his arm flew out to stop Lee but he was not so lucky, for the second one razed the skin at the back of his neck and embedded itself in his shoulder. The pain was instant and terrible. He groaned under his breath and reached a flailing hand over his shoulder and felt for the handle, ripping it free and tossing it away. Hot blood ran down his back. 

Neji changed direction and they followed, a wide bank to the left and around until Lee thought maybe they were heading back towards the bridge. There was a single moment of hope, dashed as soon as it emerged when the jounin threw out his arms to stop them again. Vexation made a mess of his features. “Go back. Trap.” 

“Is this whole forest boobytrapped?” Tenten’s gaze swung to the side and retrieved and threw two blades in the same fluid motion. A terrible shriek among the branches told them she’d hit her mark. 

Lee thought it was beginning to make sense why Amegakure had a reputation for impenetrability. 

The weak sun of dawn reached through the gaps in the canopy and lit their path; the trees were thinning out and movement was made a little easier, though it meant nothing when their pursuers thwarted any attempt at deviation. Lee’s lungs ached. He could hear Neji wheezing. All the while they rarely saw a single face, only weapons thrown in their direction, jutsu aimed from the treecover, and the seemingly endless traps that made every step a danger. He was running hot with adrenaline but he could still sense, the further they ran, the warmer and stiller the air seemed to be. 

Lee’s stomach, still spiraling, at last hit bedrock and the impact shuddered through him. 

“They’re pushing us toward the desert,” he said. 

Tenten swore. 

He tried very hard not to think about it and keep his mind on wheeling about for solutions...but it was getting hard to deny that they were losing.

The prickled bed of pine needles underfoot turned to soft moss, and then to grass, and through the plucked treeline was an ochre horizon. A breath of respite weaved over the team. No footfalls, no shrieking of weaponry, it was as if the pursuit ended completely. For a moment he wondered if luck was with them and he judged their strategy incorrectly, merely avoiding the lands of another hostile nation. 

But they were met from the front, fresh faces and clad in beige and brown, this time engaged forcibly in the ruthlessly direct fashion that defined the military strategy of the Sand. Only three so far though he knew now not to take that as reprieve. His own opponent kept her distance; long glimmering blue wires at her fingertips commanded the motion of a four-legged puppet with an incomprehensible face, a spindly, eyeless beast with a gaping mouth lined all the way down its wooden throat with serrated blades. He did not want to find out what it felt like to be devoured by it. 

Lee’s stamina was a near-indomitable thing, but he was mortal nonetheless. A dogged retreat through enemy territory, on the back of a sleepless night and a journey halfway across Fire Country, had expended a great deal of his stamina. He swallowed his panic and opened the first Gate; energy flowed to his fingertips and warmed his cottoned mouth. The puppet rattled and extended its clawed arms towards him. He leapt up to dodge it and landed a kick on its eerie excuse for a head. 

He was so focused on tearing it apart, hounded by the shinobi’s glancing, distracting blows, that he for a moment lost his teammates in the thick of it. He’d just ripped a many-jointed wooden limb out of its socket when he saw Tenten streak past him, and she was glittering with gold, and he followed her with his eyes, and his opponent struck his stomach. Lee snatched himself back and narrowly avoided losing his entrails to its claws. 

His opponent grinned and it exposed her teeth like a snarl. He tore away from her and after Tenten and the eerie clacking did not follow him. He cursed himself for not realizing. 

It felt far too sophisticated of an attack for a single team of recon shinobi. He wondered what they were expecting to meet here.

Tenten hefted the faucard over one shoulder and brought it around in a vile arc, its blade a blur of gold; in one strike she decollated the ninja towering over Neji and blood spewed and dappled the grass like spilled wine. He was on the floor, bent at the waist, pale fingers clutching the ground. A smear of maroon trailed from the corner of his mouth to his jaw. The band holding his hair in place was gone and it fell in messy, tangled strands over his shoulders. Tenten hefted him over her shoulder and they withdrew into the trees again, the laughter of the enemy bouncing off the branches and magnifying, coming from all sides. The very fact that they were permitted to seek whatever fleeting shelter was left to them was a bad sign. 

The Sand did not think it would make much difference to their fate. Lee hated to admit that it was probably true. 

But he had one idea left.

Lee did not like to lose. It was a good thing, then, that his definition of a victory was awfully skewed. 

They took refuge in the undergrowth, the sprawling, drooping branches of a hawthorn catching on their clothing. Neji panted and pushed his hair out of his eyes. “He got me,” he snarled, and he pulled back one sleeve with his other hand, and bruises like small spots of ink trailed up his skin in precise, specific order. Lee’s head buzzed. 

“We are so fucked,” Tenten said. There was no disagreement. 

He looked out into the rising dawn, the reach of its great bleached hand sprawling across the sky. “You have to run,” Lee whispered, and his voice sounded far away to his ears, detached from himself. “I will hold them off.” 

Two pairs of angry eyes landed on him but he did not meet them.

“Absolutely not,” Neji said. Tenten said, “are you crazy?” 

He had never felt more sane, or more afraid, in his life. “Either we all die, or only one of us does.” 

Lee laid a hand over his chest and felt his heart hammering against his ribs, so hard and hot he could almost smell the smoke rising off it, up from his lungs into his nose. He would not be powerless again. He would not die a death in vain.

“It is our only chance.”

"Lee." Neji's voice was wavering. "I am your squad leader. If you do this, you'll be going against orders-" 

Lee turned his gaze on his dear friend. He didn't say what he wanted to say but he thought perhaps it was clear from his expression, if the shocked look on Neji's face was any indication. 

If he went against orders, what could they do to stop him? 

If he went against orders, how could they punish a corpse? 

"We cannot lose here," Lee said. "I cannot..." _I cannot watch you die and do nothing._

He could see the frantic scramble behind Neji's eyes. They were running out of time. He could hear laughter drawing closer, words warbled by the rush of blood in his ears, _’running scared.’_ For once in his life Lee thought he knew what his destiny was, a long jagged line and a sudden end. 

“Tenten,” Neji said at last. She turned on him, fury contorting her face, but there was no space left to argue. It pained Lee to see the grief on their faces - it almost made him waver, but he would not submit to cowardice. Better grieving than the alternative. She threw herself onto him and hugged his neck and her face was wet against his skin. 

“You better meet us back home,” she whispered in his ear. “I know you can do it. If you don’t, you’ll have to answer to me.” 

Lee laughed. It snagged in his chest like a sob. 

He did not dare make a promise. If he had time, he would have said goodbye. 

Tenten formed the seals as the only one who still could. In the span between closing his eyes and opening them, the friends in front of him became only apparitions, watching him with hollowed-out stares. “May your feet be swift,” he breathed, though the intended recipients were already, thankfully, gone and running. 

He rose to his feet. It took only a light press against the Gate of Rest for it to acquiesce; renewed strength flooded through his body, heat rising and blood pooling in a flush at the surface of his skin. He stood over the clones and his grief made an excellent mask. “Come and get me then!” he roared, and was answered by gritty laughter. 

There were more of them now. They came forth as beckoned and he met them gladly, defending in a wide circle around the figments of his downed teammates; they were falling for it, all of their focus on what appeared to be their last opponent. Lee kept out of their reach, dodging blow after blow, throwing an elbow to catch the one trying to sneak up behind him. His heartbeat was loud and unnaturally fast in his ears as it struggled to keep up with the chakra searing through his veins. 

The whistle of a kunai through the air, the ruffle of its paper tag caught his attention and Lee blew the fourth Gate, using the burst of strength to cover ground and grab it out of the air. He threw it at the knot of advancing shinobi and they scattered with a resounding howl, swallowed up in the explosion that not even Lee could fully escape; it flung him through the air and he only just got his legs under him before he landed, wobbling on his feet. Tenten’s clone fell victim to its blast radius and he knew at once the jig was up. “Clone jutsu!” one warned the others. The attacking group split in two. The shinobi who spoke covered ground to the hidingplace where Neji’s clone was still cowering; the others kept Lee back, though he knew now it would be a waste of time to attempt further defense. 

It was caught easily with how little chakra Tenten could manage to feed into it, and could land no blows of its own. The shinobi stabbed his kunai through the faux-Neji’s heart and Lee cringed, turning his head away, not wanting to see it even if it was a falsehood; he murmured a senseless apology under his breath, knowing Tenten would have felt both of those blows as soon as the clones vanished into smoke. 

A few of his pursuers turned back after the retreating Leaf now that the ruse was exposed, but the bulk of the pack was still focused on him, murderous intent boring into him from a near-dozen directions. He shouldered himself against it and clenched his fists, a manic challenging expression pulling and gnawing at his face, and the pounding adrenaline through his heart, the knowledge of what was coming, rang through his body and silenced all of his thoughts. 

The only exception. To defend the lives of very important people. To defend his ninja way.

He blew through the fifth and sixth Gates with no regard for how they splintered under the brunt force - did it matter now? - and shot across the thinning grass, leaving singed earth in his wake, filling his nose with ash. His vision, suddenly and cunningly acute, fringed itself in an ethereal green glow. His limbs felt weightless as he swung at the closest backtracking shinobi, the impact of the strike snapping his head sickeningly to one side. 

They were still reacting to the first blow as Lee felled another, a spinning kick throwing him with such force that when he hit the stone edging it made a fearsome, flinty roar and the rock split down the middle. When they laid upon him in hot pursuit he let them force him back, back away from Konoha, back into the vast and unforgiving desert. If he could not take them all down, he would make sure his teammates had a head start. 

He pressed against the Gate of Wonder, and for a moment the howling pain surged back into his body and he shuddered, pressing further and further. The Gate, only twice tested, resisted him with its ironclad and near-pristine bars, but he did not relent to the agony and kept battering it in his desperation. It flew wide open and its mouth spilled liquid fire, sinking its fearsome claws into every muscle and sinew and bone- 

Lee was now moving with such speed that he was no longer consciously aware of his surroundings, his damnably giftless eyes unable to fathom it, only his oft-whetted instincts guiding him to his target. Three grouped up back to back against him and he almost laughed as he cut through them all, the momentum of his mighty blow passing from body to body; he could bless them with a quick and painless demise, and that was all the generosity he had to offer. He felt mad with it, all of the heat coursing through him, swinging around to catch a punch aimed at the back of his head and feeling bones crack under and inside his hand. 

It was not enough. They were encircling him, putting distance between each other, and he was starting to slow. The candlewick of his eighth Gate fluttered in a cold and weary wind. He took all of his heat to it, trying to bring a nascent blaze, summon the last of his fire. A great green dragon gaping its maw and lighting up its breath, but its throat was shot through and all that came out was that cold, cold wind. 

He didn't have enough chakra left to push through the seal into his heart. Failure mixed with the copper tang of his blood in his mouth, tongue-curlingly bitter. The wind blew over its flame and it sputtered, and his limbs stalled, and they were closing in on him now, tasting victory upwind. He felt a blow to his back, a wind release seizing him up off his feet and slamming him with vengeful force into the ground, sand-burns scraping blister-hot skin. It pressed and held him there, a vice over his ribs that starved him of breath. 

"That was a fun game." The shinobi staggered across the sand towards him, a hand raised to contain the gale, blood smeared across the line of his brow and streaking down into the curves of his grin. There was nothing but hatred in his face. "But it's over for you. You’re going to pay for what you just did, Leaf." 

His hands shifted into a blur of signs. Lee closed his eyes. He thought, if he saw his father again, what he would think of his son now. 

Would he be proud? 

As if in a last bid for his honor, he met his killer's eyes, pulling at a bravery he saw once, long ago. 

A minute change of expression was the only warning. The man’s gaze lifted a fraction and the corners of his mouth went slack. He then vanished from sight; Lee scrambled backwards on the heels of his hands and every movement tore at his screaming muscles. His mouth opened in some hysterical frustration, what was left of his thoughts preoccupied by worry for his team and poised to shout at Neji for doubling back against his word. His sacrifice would mean nothing then, if they put themselves in the line of fire for him.

Around him the dunes shimmered. The ground vibrated beneath his palms and rose up against his skin; the sensation of its moving granules beckoned a memory he'd tried to discard and Lee recoiled with a choked-off cry of horror, but he had no strength left to free himself. _No, no, no, no._ It was not rescue after all, it was better, or maybe worse: better not to watch his teammates die, worse to know he was resigned to a more bitter fate than this.

A sudden wind stirred and kicked up the sand with it; he curled inward as best he could, clamping his eyes and mouth shut as it scraped at his face. It rose and rose, tangling his hair and building pressure until it gave with a terrible shearing noise like the air itself was torn asunder, and all fell silent. The stench of burning friction and hot copper filled his nose, but he was left unscathed.

Lee dared to open his eyes.

The dunes were awash in deep garnet, clotted and viscous and sluggishly reflecting the sun. He did not see a single intact corpse anywhere - it was all shreds, rendered unrecognizable and scattered in a wide circle around him, mangled heaps of flesh and viscera. The dunes began to roil, a grotesque mirage that rippled like the unfurling coils of a sand viper; he watched in morbid, shell-shocked transfixion as the carnage began to sink into the churning waves of the sand, streaks of pale buff cutting through the soaked scarlet until at last every grain was turned over and the desert came to settle back into untouched, unremarkable stillness. 

He bent aside and vomited. It didn’t help his stomach when that too was swallowed by shifting sediment and its presence was erased.

When he looked up there was a face only feet away from his own. His body at last was done with him and only responded to the shock with a weak shudder, and he opened his mouth to speak but all he could muster was a strangled noise.

The shinobi from the woods. Lee knew it when he felt the sand but he didn’t want to believe it, even now faintly hopeful that this was some sort of dream. Perhaps he had perished after all and this was some feverish construction of the afterlife, though the ache in his bones was a mortal one and such an afterlife would be a disappointment. His skin was the color of sandstone, messy refraction glittering in the grains stuck to his cheeks; ai was carved into the skin of his temple above one almond-shaped eye, well-scarred but still a furious red. The features of his face were exceedingly fine, almost delicate, rippled by an expression that would be well-suited for the face of a naturalist, having spotted a unique specimen in the brush.

He leaned forward very slowly and Lee was stilled by the sky-pale eyes that were scanning over his face with a distant fascination, strikingly sharp and rimmed in shadow. Neither man moved, regarding each other with caution as they would a wild creature, unsure yet if it would come to blows and unsure what the result would be if it did.

“Hold your breath,” the stranger said. “You’ll regret it if you don’t.” 

When faced with such a statement spoken by an individual who just turned an attacking force of hardened soldiers into pulp and discarded the evidence just as easily, there was little to do but obey. Lee held his breath. The sand was moving again, rising in smooth, convex walls that engulfed them both; he felt the air in the sphere leave as the light did, and it was replaced by the feeling of movement through space while one is sitting still. It did foul things to his already unsettled insides but was fortunate in its briefness - the sensation stilled, the walls crumbled.

The desert remained featureless and devoid of landmark, practically the same to his untrained eyes as the place they were before, but they had to have moved as he could no longer see the distant sandstone walls of the outpost. He couldn’t see the trees, either, not even as a distant green smear on the horizon. All around were only the far-off jagged lines of escarpments and a long, barren acclivity of sun-kissed sand. That distressed him deeply. There was no way to make sense of his location out here; a transportation jutsu had an inevitable limit to its range, though what that limit was, he had no way of discerning. He could be on the other side of Wind Country for all he was aware.

Lee had no strength left for fear, only the faint whisperings of weary frustration weaved throughout the rushing in his ears. He did not know if this was a contrivance of revenge - if he allowed himself an opinion on the matter he wouldn’t begrudge the man that, but nonetheless. “If you are going to kill me,” he said, every word hoarse and requiring immense effort, “I would appreciate if you did not draw it out.” 

The stranger blinked at him. He seemed neither surprised nor irked by the words, in fact largely unaffected. 

“I wasn’t planning on killing you.” 

With that important bit of information squared away, neither seemed to know what to do. 

Lee must have left all his good sense back in Konoha for he was first to break the silence. It was a single resolute decision: he was stuck here for the moment and he was far too spent to partake in the dance of awkward tension, whatever the result of this encounter would be. He stretched out a hand; it trembled from fingertip to shoulder with the strain of keeping it aloft. “Okay, well. My name is Lee.” 

A pause, before a matching hand rose in turn and clasped Lee’s in all the manner of someone mimicking a behavior they’d only witnessed in passing. His skin was a shock of cold against the heat of the sun overhead. “Gaara.” 

He supposed it was nice to finally put a name to the face. 

His ears were ringing again, or perhaps they always were and the shock just staved it off; Lee was faintly cognizant of a lightheaded feeling. “I think I need to lie down,” he said thoughtfully, and he barely got the words out before the ground skewed towards his face and his mind went dark.

* * *

In the dark, he saw a pinhole of light, and as he watched it the light bled outwards and the hole blew wide, white and shimmering. It enveloped him, transported him, the air vanishing and reappearing around him and the dissociative vertigo of far-off movement teasing at the edge of his limited consciousness. 

He was standing atop a dune once more (was he before? he had never been to the desert that he could recall, had he?) though its appearance struck him as Wrong, ruddier than it should be, and that tugged at a recollection that did not come to him here. The sun stood stark and white above his head and its light touched every surface but his skin felt cold, as if it were a winter night. 

There was something on the rise ahead of him, he realized. Nothing more than a smudge of charcoal against the sand at this distance. Lee stepped towards it and he did not even feel the ground under his feet. This only occurred to him as a thoughtful observation, a dreamlike reality about it that felt unquestionable. He was in the desert but he had never been there, it seemed sensible to him that it was not truly tangible, a ghost-land he walked through, eyes trained on that distant shape.

It was some unrecognizable beast, the features that gradually earned discernment as the distance fell away appearing entirely foreign. Vaguely canid with broad dusky flanks, shaggy-furred and stout-barreled with a short, dense tail; its ears were rounded and black and barely made profile against the rich lush of its mane. Its blunted muzzle turned in his direction and its eyes were intelligent and void of a pupil, its left eye solid black and its right very pale, the iris’s hue toeing that pellucid line between violet and blue. A blue-black tongue snaked over its jowls and the sickles of its exposed fangs were white as bone. 

It opened its mouth. There was no movement amongst its night-colored mucosa, but a familiar voice spoke like it was whispered right against his ear on both sides, every and all sides, from around him and inside of him too.

_“You have no idea what you’re getting into.” _

“Neji?” Lee said, but the word made no sound to his ears. He kept speaking anyway, his distant mind making little acknowledgment of the phenomenon. “Why are you a... uh, what are you, exactly?” 

_”Always asking the wrong questions, huh?”_ The Neji-creature rose up on long, wolfish legs, and the stark contrast between those spindly limbs and its broad, muscle-webbed ribs and haunches leaned just on the side of eldritch. It was tall, taller than he was, and he had a vague recollection that he himself was rather tall. What an interesting vessel his friend had chosen.

“Is Tenten here too?” Lee looked around and the movement felt sluggish and weightless, as if he were wading through gel. “Are you both okay?”

Why wouldn’t they be okay? He was forgetting something, he thought, but try as he might it would not come to him. There was only this alien knowing that brought sentences to his lips that he did not understand. The strange beast seemed unimpressed by his queries and still offered no answer.

_“You are standing on the edge of a precipice.”_ The voice sounded less like Neji now, but no less familiar; Lee tried to place its origin but to him it seemed like many recognizable voices, blended together into unrecognizability. _”And it is not the first time you have been here. Did you make the right choice last time?”_

Last time? 

“I do not know,” he said.

_”That is not new, either,”_ it scoffed. The mocking jerk of its broad, heavy head made its mane ripple along its spine, wavering in the breeze like curls of smoke.

Lee wanted to know, though. The yearning for it burned him, but he scrabbled for it with desperate hands that never quite reached far enough to touch. 

_”You cannot see your tracks in the snow.”_ It looked away from him, and the cold felt more tangible now. Lee followed its gaze and the dunes were muffled in white, white like the beast’s teeth, still transient underfoot. It spread on and on in all directions and he could see no end to it, could not even place the line between cloudless, pallid sky and earth. Barren and dead, from the heavens downward. _”How will you know if you’re walking in circles?”_

What did that mean? The cold curled a hook under his ribs, softly beckoning. “Then guide me,” he begged. He was growing desperate - for what, he didn’t know, but he would take anything. The urgency dogged at his throat like hunger, like thirst, like the heavy hand of exhaustion. 

A laugh, more akin to the rattle of dead branches against one another, all hollow and skeletal and the first unfamiliar sound from its maw. _“How do you know I would lead you where you need to go?”_

Neji would not lead him astray! But this was not Neji, was it? It was something else, an echo of something intimate yet somehow unexplored. It pulsed abreast of him and away from him at once, the scant remembrance of a face spotted in the street that was only once seen in a dream.

Lee did not understand and only now did he finally feel afraid, as the creature leveled him in that pale-black stare, surrounded all by shadow, slavering stardust at its jaws. 

He didn’t know anything at all.

* * *

He awoke in a cave.

Outside he could see the soaring cliffs of sandstone, striped in amber and ochre and sienna, and the sun turning orange in the sky but still standing strong and sowing daylight into the narrow cavern-mouth. This was the first thing Lee recognized; the second and more pressing realization was warmth, on either side of his cheeks, and the touch of a gaze on his face. 

Gaara. He remembered now, in a flood and flurry, and he lurched back for a moment just from the shock of it all; the warmth - hands, hands framing his face - fell away, and oddly he missed it. He was cold. “Sorry,” a tawny mouth murmured, and he fixated on it, followed the trail of a nose up to pale eyes - pale eyes–

He’d seen something of pale eyes, hadn’t he? Not quite like this, but close, distorted, and the echo of impending doom–

“Mngh,” was the only reply Lee could muster. Oh, the ache. He’d forgotten about it. He drew his limbs up despite their throbbing, stilted protest and sought to ground himself. He was not used to the agony of the seventh Gate, only distantly familiar with the kind of chakra exhaustion that gave him nothing left to bully out of his body. He truly felt more dead than alive. 

Gaara murmured something indiscernible. His hands rose and fell again, conflicted; at last he shifted over and sat parallel to him, facing the entrance and the sky and the endless golden realm. He was a little close, a little in Lee’s space, though in his vacuous state it offered some bizarre anchor to reality and he gave no negative reaction. They sat together, silent. He wondered how long Gaara was there watching him, that oddly uncomprehending look in his eyes. 

His breathing was still labored, and Lee took assessment of himself for the first time since the battle. His skin looked ragged and felt worse, scrapes and filth across his dark fingers where his bandages offered no protection, chafed spots peering through tears in his jumpsuit. At least his vest was still intact, though an ugly rust-colored stain bloomed across the waist and the fabric was stiff to the touch. He couldn’t tell if it was another’s blood or his own. The grime and gore all over him was stifling; he had a spare set of clothing in his pack, but there was no way he could withstand moving enough to change (and admittedly there were other impracticalities at play, considering his company and their confined quarters). Every movement brought pain, putting pressure on a torn muscle here, a fractured bone there. Lee decided it was for the best if he shifted as little as possible. 

Gaara offered him a canteen, holding it with the same tentative caution that marked his every approach thus far, and the reminder of his thirst brought to the forefront how horrifically parched he felt. Lee grabbed for it immediately but the moment it passed hands and rested fully in his grasp, the weight of it brought his weak hands back to his lap. His breath hitched and he could not get it aloft again. Tears of frustration pricked at his eyes. 

“Here.” Gaara took it again, unscrewed the cap and held it to Lee’s mouth. He flushed but was not embarrassed enough to deny sustenance; it was awkward and as much water ended up in his mouth as did dripping down his chin, but he drank until his stomach could withstand no more. It didn’t feel like enough. He had never been so thirsty. 

“Thanks.” 

The silence resumed and he sat within it, trying to piece together his recollections of the past day. The mission, the fight...his squad, he didn’t make it back to Fire Country, they probably thought…

He realized then that he didn’t know if they made it back, either; the thought made him shiver, and the shiver made him wince, even that tugging a tattered nerve somewhere. Lee had failed his self-challenge but he prayed that his inability to do better hadn’t cost them their lives. He prayed that he would still make it back to find out, and that when he did, it would only be a tearful reunion.

Lee didn’t really want to think about that right now, but there wasn’t much else to think about. He glanced aside at Gaara who was...still staring at him. It made him uncomfortable; less the staring and more the way he went about it with that peculiar curiosity. He felt pinned like an insect on a board. 

“Um.” Dark-edged eyes focused more intently on him; he cast about for a topic of conversation but his brain was still stuck on the utter shock of sharing a space with that stranger, a reminder of his close brush with death and the near-murder he committed. In the end that was all he could think to talk about.

“Why didn’t you kill me? Uh, the first time.” 

Gaara looked confused by the question. He turned his head away and said nothing; Lee looked down at his hands again, cursing himself for picking a fraught topic. If they had to be around each other he would like if it weren’t awkward.

“It was the look in your eyes,” Gaara said, suddenly and far later than a response would be expected, and Lee startled and looked at him. He was still turned away from him and the sun traced a flaxen line along what Lee could see of the swell of his cheek. 

“When you attacked me. Like you weren’t there at all.” His head fell a fraction. “It looked familiar.” 

Lee lightly clasped his hands around his knees and stared at them, their bloody battered bandages in dire need of replacement. It was a vague answer if an answer at all and yet he understood it. The memory, flickering in its age, was dominated not by the fight but the before and after: his dissociated drop from the trees, Gaara’s face smothered in Lee’s shadow, gaunt and holding fast. Familiar indeed.

“I could not do it either.” He pressed his heels into the sand. It gave only slightly, the granules clinging to themselves as if wetted. The desert acted very strangely around Gaara, he was beginning to notice. “You reminded me of myself, before Gai-sensei took me in.” 

He felt Gaara’s gaze heavy on his cheek, and when he managed to meet it he found it oddly gentle. It altered the planes of his face, softening them at the edges and easing the furrow between his sparse brows. “Is that why you called me a murderer?” he asked, and Lee looked away, clenched his fingers on his knees and ignored the sting. A sudden heat fanned within his ribs.

He wasn’t quite sure why it made him so angry. Maybe it was that Gaara didn’t deserve to know what happened. He was from the Sand...it wasn’t his fault, Lee knew that. Did he? He’d fought against, fought alongside shinobi younger than Gaara would’ve been at the time. It would be an extraordinary coincidence if he’d taken part, but that aside he was still one of them. He had the blood of Lee’s comrades on his hands and the ashes of Lee’s homeland on his boots. 

If he thought about it he always remembered that he was no cleaner, so for now he did not think about it. 

“Yes,” he said at last, his jaw working. 

For several tense moments they sat in silence, Gaara’s gaze still burning the side of his head and Lee still vacantly studying the dunes that wavered and rippled with the heat of the sun. 

“I don’t know what happened,” Gaara said, “but I’m sorry.” 

Lee scoffed under his breath. The words sounded genuine and that only further stoked the sudden, fathomless outrage. He didn’t want a killer’s sympathy, hollow and useless as it was, nothing as a salve on his heart. 

Gaara did not press him further and he felt his gaze fall away at last. When Lee had time to stew in his rage it soured inside of him, transfiguring itself into a bitter thing. In rebuking words it reminded him of his own sins and that he was in no position to pass judgment. It gestured to the kindness shown in sparing his life not once, but twice, pointed out that he’d killed some of his own to do it. Lee swallowed down his guilt. It was never the right time to grieve, and never in the right way. He thought he might collapse from the weight of it in his chest. 

He was readying a reluctant apology when Gaara spoke; he looked up and the man was settled in a mimicry of his own posture, staring off into the distance, hands folded in his lap. He placed each word with great deliberation, as if he’d spent that entire time just formulating what to say.

“I just left Suna when I met you.” 

Lee stared at him, surprised. He continued on without acknowledgment, his eyes trained on the distant horizon and the pale, cloudless sky. “My father, he’s...a high-ranking shinobi. All he cares about are power and control, and the war, it gives him both. The things he’s done to people...to me…” 

Gaara’s knuckles whitened in his lap. “I don’t know what happened, but I’ve seen enough to know it was terrible. I’m sorry, and I mean that.” 

He still wasn’t looking at him; from this angle Gaara’s face was sculpted in chiaroscuro, unmoving like stone. Lee didn’t know what to make of such a candid declaration. It was a trust offering on the man’s part, he knew, but he did not think he was ready to accept it yet. The quiet stretched taut and he struggled to formulate a response out of the mess of his thoughts. 

“Then...you are not a shinobi?” 

When Gaara faced him at last, he looked weary. There was a dull look in his eyes. “Not anymore.” 

Somehow, that made him feel better. Lee dipped his chin. 

“I do not know what you have experienced either, but I am sorry for that, too.” 

A flicker of surprise made its way across Gaara’s face; Lee was reminded, oddly, of the street cat that lurked on the stairwells of the barracks, the way she first flinched at his touch before charily accepting the warmth. “Thank you.” 

A fair trade would be offering history of his own, Lee thought, but he made no move to clarify what vague information he’d presented about himself. It was not something he talked about, not even with Neji and Tenten, not even with Gai, the only subject that rendered him completely and uncharacteristically mute. If he had to speak he had to dwell, if only for a moment, and time had yet to mold him into a man that could withstand to dwell. 

But Gaara asked nothing further of him; he looked...what Lee interpreted as relieved, or at least more relaxed than before. The air in the cave seemed a little thinner, easier to breathe. 

“You should rest.” 

Lee nodded, though he wasn’t sure how he would get any rest in such an odd place, after all that happened. He shifted back to rest his weight on the cave wall, felt it flat against his back through his clothes and he sat up straight again. 

“Where’s my backpack?” 

Gaara pointed in the direction of the furthest wall, where his bag lay in a dusty heap, one strap slashed clean through. He made a relieved sound and settled once more. On top of everything else, at least he didn’t lose his supplies; when he felt a little better he could make use of them.

His thoughts still as much fog as comprehension, he closed his eyes against the amber force of the waning sun. A moment to breathe...that was all he needed.

* * *

He tasted smoke, felt the carbon grit on the pad of his tongue, and at once he was awake and reeling. 

The cave walls loomed close and heavy around him, painted with garish, flickering shadows. The fire was at its center, rising up in a lurid plume like the wing of a great bird, the tips of its fanned feathers brushing the roof. Lee struggled to get his feet under himself and could not place through his drowsy panic why they refused to respond; he was trapped, he was going to die, his bones blackening and turning to ash–

He thought he heard his name, and there was a frenzied edge to the word. A dark shape moved into his line of sight, in sharp relief against the dancing flames, and Lee lashed out blindly before it could get too close; when he made contact the force of it shuddered through the brittle nerves in his arm and the pain jarred him fully awake. 

Gaara stared at him, wide-eyed. His sand had caught Lee’s fist, though the points of his knuckles made it through the barrier only inches away from his face. He recoiled at once, pressing his back to the wall of the cave; he didn’t remember falling asleep and his mind was sluggish at recalling where he was, what brought him here, but it was trickling back to him in slow, mortifying tracks.

It’d been a long time since the trauma of his childhood struck him so suddenly and fiercely. He no longer flinched at the smell of smoke, desensitized to a world that seemed more often than not aflame, but Team Gai still never sparked a fire when they made camp unless they were out in open air, where Lee could keep a comforting distance. His fellow nin all knew, either through experience or word of mouth, that Rock Lee had many invisible barriers around him, hidden protective tags that only exposed themselves when trodden on.

But there was no way Gaara could know. He’d refused to tell him anything, and now he almost attacked him - _again_, his mind supplied. Lee covered his face with his hands, oscillating between shame at his reaction and the need to block out the light. "I am sorry, I - please put it out." 

"It's too cold," Gaara responded, a furrow forming in the middle of his forehead, "you’ll–" 

"_Please._" He sounded more desperate than he would like to, but it seemed to get the point across. Gaara made an acquiescing noise and the resuming hiss indicated to Lee that his sand was on the move. He risked peeking between his fingers and watched it swarm into the little firepit, snuffing out the flames. “Th-thank you.” 

In moments the wind from the entrance cut through what was left of the fire's warmth. It was cold - freezing, in fact. He'd done his share of reading about surviving on enemy territory, as did every shinobi who liked to be prepared; he knew it got cold at night in the desert without the sun to refract heat off the ground, but feeling it was another matter, and feeling it in his weakened state still another. His teeth clacked together in his mouth and a deep shiver started in his chest and spread swiftly outward. 

Gaara, now barely visible in the shadows of the cave, looked...upset, or so Lee thought. He was remarkably difficult to read even in broad daylight, only the barest shifting of the lines around his eyes to offer any hint of his emotions. The wrinkles splintering off from the inner corners read less like his earlier frowns and more like that moment when he talked about his father. He spoke up finally. "If I start one outside, where you can't see it, would that be okay?" 

Lee didn't know what use a fire would be to him if it were not in proximity, but he nodded, the gesture jerky from his shivering. The change of expression to relief was much clearer; Gaara stood up and removed his heavy maroon coat, leaning in close. He made a faint questioning noise, holding it out, and Lee nodded again, grateful when he draped it over him. He was far too weary to put it on fully and he had doubts about the fit, but as a makeshift blanket it was very warm. He wondered how Gaara could stand to wear it during the day. 

Underneath Gaara was wearing only a thin black shirt, and mesh chainmail reached gridded lines beyond its short sleeves and down to the crux of his elbows. He would freeze out there like that, fire or no fire; Lee offered a weak protest, moving as if to shoulder off the coat. "W-w-what about you?"

Gaara fixed him with a look that he did not have to work to interpret. He stopped moving at once. "I have my sand," Gaara said, which made for a perplexing answer, but he was gone before Lee could ask further. 

It wasn't clear how long he was gone, and for all Lee knew he'd been abandoned here, though at this point he was starting to accept that Gaara - for whatever reason - was trying to keep him alive. He may have dozed off, but his surroundings were so dark that at times he couldn't tell if his eyes were open or closed. When he was at last alerted to Gaara's presence it was through sound rather than sight. A soft scraping noise, like digging, not far from his left side. It was warm in the cave again but he saw no source of firelight, only the heavy cool glow of the crow moon hanging low in the sky; it brought some illumination to the depths - he must have fallen asleep after all - and he could see the line of Gaara's back. He was bent over a pit dug into the floor, manipulating large stones into it with his sand. 

"Whuh..." Lee sat up a little. Gaara looked over at him, brushing backfill over the stones. 

"I warmed them in the fire,” he explained. “It should be enough to last until sunrise.” 

“Oh.” Lee considered that information for a moment, his brain taking its sweet time to process it. “That’s cool,” he said finally. He was still very tired; his eyelids fought his attempts to stay awake long enough to speak at all.

“You’re worse than before,” Gaara said. It sounded like worry. Lee closed his eyes against it. 

He only needed to rest, that was all. He did not shadow death’s doorstep only to let himself be welcomed inside...he would not leave his friends. 

Sleep curled warm fingers over his forehead, and he acquiesced.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter ended up taking a long time to write (13k words! a record chapter for me!!) but i hope it was worth the wait!


End file.
